Koffler Centre of the Arts Books & Ideas: Shani Mootoo & Jane Urquhart Thursday, November 5, 2020 Hello. You’re listening to Koffler Digital Audio, a stream that encompasses all of our downloadable audio content including audio walks, radio plays, podcasts, and artist interviews. I shall now introduce Shani and Jane. Shani was born in Ireland, grew up in Trinidad, and now lives in Prince Edward County. She holds an MA in English from the University of Guelph, writes fiction and poetry, and is a visual artist whose work has been exhibited locally and internationally. Mootoo’s critically acclaimed novels include Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab, Valmiki’s Daughter, He Drowns She in the Sea, and Cereus Blooms at Night. She is a recipient of the K.M. Hunter Artist Award, a Chalmers Arts Fellowship, and the James Duggins Mid-Career Novelist Award from the Lambda Literary Awards. Her work has been long- and short listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize four times, the International Dublin Literary Award, as well as the Booker Prize. I’d also like to mention that Shani was one of our jurors for this year’s Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish literature. Jane is the author of eight internationally-acclaimed novels, three volumes of poetry, and one collection of short fiction. Her first novel, The Whirlpool, won France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and she has been nominated for the Orange Prize, the Giller Prize, and the Booker Prize. A holder of honorary doctorates from several Canadian universities, she is the recipient of Canada’s Governor General’s Award and Trillium Prize. She is also the editor of the most recent Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories and is an officer of the Order of Canada. Shani, Jane, I’m pleased to pass the screen over to you. Thanks, everyone. Jane Urquhart: Thank you so much. So good evening. I have the honour of saying a few words about Shani before we launch into our conversation. I was absolutely honoured to be asked to be here tonight for Shani’s event and also honoured, of course, to be able to have a conversation with her about her extraordinary new book, but I am just going to say a few words first. Shani Mootoo is a gifted, gifted creator of both visual and literary work. She has one of the most interesting collections of citizenships as well. She was born in Dublin to Trinidadian parents and grew up in Trinidad, and came to Canada when she was 19. She has shown her very interesting visual art internationally and, by the way, this visual art (I should make a point to say) includes video art, so she is also a film maker of sorts within the visual art world. But tonight we are here to celebrate quite belatedly, the launch of her exquisite thought-provoking novel, Polar Vortex. I say “belatedly” because of course the book was already launched months ago and it has been clear sailing ever since. Like many of her previous works, it has been short listed for the Giller Prize and has garnered considerable praise. So what I would like to do now is, I would like to toast Shani on the launch now, and this of course is an excuse for me to have a drink of wine, on her wonderful, wonderful book and I wish it all the best. Shani Mootoo: Thank you, Jane. I shouldn’t be drinking when you’re toasting me, but I will. Thank you so much. Jane Urquhart: And you’re drinking Writers’ Tears from Ireland, which is a fantastic thing to drink. Okay, Shani’s literary work has been celebrated and taught in Canada, the UK, the USA, and Trinidad. Her voice is precise, yet lyrical and it’s compelling and I think there is a stunning marriage in your work, Shani, between toughness and poetry. And she asks the necessary questions, important questions such as in her narratives concerning the development of relationships across gender, race, and identity lines as well in a complete spectrum of many, many different ways. Do we ever really essentially know the other? But most importantly, I think you ask this question, Shani, do we ever really know ourselves? Have we ever become fully conscious? So in Polar Vortex, we are presented with four main players, Priya, Alex, Prakash, and Skye. More than a narrative examination of a love triangle/quartet, which is one of the things I noticed that people were saying this was a love triangle and I’m going, “Wait a minute! Hold it! Aren’t there four people in there?” Nevertheless, it’s much more than that, but it’s also very compelling in that way, and so that’s only one layer of the book. The book works on so many different levels. I eventually decided, really that this is a major work of philosophy. I think this is a philosophical book. It’s a meditation on the nature of love and letting go. Is there an academic subject called the philosophy of love? Because if there is, this definitely fits into that category. I think of Stendhal’s On Love. This is my question, however. The majority of the book is presented from Priya’s point of view. Alex is an academic, however, studying forgeries. Now, that is a fabulous metaphor, kind of a central metaphor for the book. Did you intend it to be? Or was it one of those lucky echoes that sometimes happens? Shani Mootoo: Jean, I’ll answer your question, but first of all, I just want to say thank you so much to the Koffler Centre and Diaspora Dialogues for continuing to be interested in hosting this launch so many months after my book has been out in the world. And it's sort of funny that we’re having this launch now, but the reason that I really wanted to is because there’s something very, very important in a launch that didn’t get to happen and I’d like to do that right now, which is to say thank you to certain people who were very, very important in me writing this book and getting the book out into the world. I want to say thank you to the people who supported me in writing the book. For afar, that would be my father and my siblings. They’re always there behind me and that’s really, really special given some of the subjects that I write about. They know what I write about and they’re 100% there. My friends, Shelagh Hurley- Mathers, Jane Howard, and Pam Joliffe were very important in being around. And there are a number of other friends, but the three of them definitely, in terms of writing. Deborah Root, my partner. You know, we have an amazing, creative life here at home where we support each other and it’s pretty special. I want to say thank you to Samantha Haywood for taking on the book as my agent and then giving it to Book Hub to Hazel and Jay. They understood the book so well, it was a dream come true, really. And then they hired Meg Storey to edit it and Ingrid Poulson to do the cover. It just came together so really very nicely for me. So I want to say thanks to Koffler and to Diaspora Dialogues and I’m so happy to be doing this with you, Jane. Jane Urquhart: It’s a real pleasure. Shani Mootoo: This chance to have the two of us being of Irish something. Jane Urquhart: Yes, exactly, and I wasn’t born there. Shani Mootoo: And living in this neck of the woods. Jane Urquhart: And being here in Canada, yeah, and in this particular part of Canada which is such an interesting setting for your book because the United Empire loyalists settled this part of the world and they themselves were kind of migrants. They were a whole different kind of migrant, but nevertheless, they were leaving behind a situation that they couldn’t really tolerate and coming up through Prince Edward County where you now live, and settling the land in various ways. And so it’s a fascinating part of the world to be in. Shani Mootoo: So to answer your question, you partially included this in a possible answer that this is one of these things that happens, one of these serendipitous things that happens when you’re writing. You know, because the world that you’re creating, it really is a little universe that does develop a logic of its own and without you realizing, if you really kind of sort of follow the creation of this world, there are things that will happen in it that you don’t even realize until the book is all sealed up and it got it’s nice cover and stuff like that. And then you realize, oh, wow, yeah. So Alex is an academic and she is writing about forgeries and a few other things that happened that I sort of realized afterwards, like smell of the mouse, for instance. Jane Urquhart: Um hm. I wondered about that as well. I wondered if that had come naturally to you or whether you had made a decision concerning the idea of something that is decaying. I think we should point out that Alex and Priya are partners and they live together in a house in Prince Edward County, more or less, at least that’s where it was in my mind.